Strange Weirdness at Casa Forcie

The weirdness [this time] comes from my two-year-old. Now granted, that's just a weird age to begin with, what with all the temper tantrums and asserting independence and the other stuff that goes with being two. [Side note: Believe it or not, number three kid is the only one to EVER have a rolling-on-the-floor-kicking-and-screaming temper tantrum. Really, I could have lived my whole life just fine without ever having to experience one of those, but there you go. It was interesting, though, and a bit comical in spots. Watching her scream, roll, and scoot all the way across the living room floor was really funny, and if I hadn't laughed, I might have lost my mind instead. She has an incredibly piercing scream, that kid. Besides, my personal parenting philosophy is "See The Humor Where You Can, Because It Could Always Be Worse,"... Or maybe, "Laugh or Die Trying" ;-)...]

Okay, so anyway, the past few nights, I've put her to bed, covered her up, turned the light off and said goodnight. Within two minutes, she starts screaming bloody murder, and I'm not talking about the "You've put me in bed and I don't want to be here so I'm mad and gonna tell you about it," cry. I'm talking about the "Something just poked me really hard with a needle and I'm scared to death," cry. Awful, that.

Each night, for the past three nights, I've gone into the bedroom, turned on the light, looked for spiders, needles, bugs, thorns, anything that might have been causing the screaming. The first night, she didn't have any socks on, and was laying on her back with her feet up in the air shaking them like something had bitten her toes. I checked her feet for splinters, bites, etc. Nothing. I put some socks on her, and she finally went to sleep. Well, by the third night of this, I'm thinking the kid's just lost her mind or something. I put socks on her last night before she went to bed, did the usual bedtime thing, and left the room.

Again with the screaming. I went in and checked her. Nothing. So I took her out of the bed, took the sheet off, flipped the mattress, put a clean mattress pad and sheet on the bed, switched pillows, put her back in bed, turned the light off, said good night, and came in to the computer to write.

Yup, you guessed it. Blood curdling screams. At this point, I'm thinking, maybe I'll just let her cry for a while and see if she calms down on her own. It might have worked, but for the seven year old who shares a room with her. Number one kid comes in and says, "Mom, I think there's something wrong with [number three]. She keeps looking under the covers and screaming like there's something under there. I think something's trying to get her." Oh boy.

One last time, I thought to myself. I went into the room, looked at my beautiful daughter, who, at the sight of me, stopped crying and sat up in the bed. I said something like, "What is your problem, child?" "Uh, da do um rnmnm dat," she said. [She doesn't speak English yet, but I think, roughly translated, it means, "I'm doing my very best to drive you crazy, Mother. I believe I've almost succeeded, what do you think?"]

So, I did what any good mother would do. I took her blanket away from her. If she didn't have anything to look under, maybe she'd stop, right? Then I just looked at her for a minute. Can you guess what she did? She looked at me, gave me the tiniest [and most adorable] mischievous grin, rolled over on her side, hugged her cloth burpy diaper, and closed her eyes. I didn't hear another peep from her for the rest of the night. I'm not making this up! I've said before that the more kids we have, the weirder they get, and this is just one more example of how true that statement is.

Welcome to my world.